Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
by kittyawesomeness
Summary: Sorry it's short, but it was the best I could come up with in such a short time. Anyway, Susan and her kids find out their house might be keeping a secret none of them want to experience.
1. In the Beginning

Susan, recently divorced, moved into her new home with her children Max and Alexandra. It was the small family of three's first night in the old Victorian-style house on the end of Brooks Street. Their neighbors welcomed them, but Susan noticed something odd. She felt the cozy little neighborhood was hiding something from her and her family. It was curious, this feeling was. She felt nervous, like something she should know was being kept from her, hiding. She felt it mattered to her safety, and more importantly, Max and Alex's safety. She decided it was nothing and forgot about it, and she never told her kids.

Alex sighed in sadness. Her mother was forcing her to stay in this extremely creepy house, and she left all her friends behind in the move. She hated the house, with its pillars out front and the shutters on the windows. The walls were painted a dull shade of gray, and she just wanted to paint them something else, even if it was something as boring as beige. But now that she thought about it, beige would be wonderful compared to rain cloud gray.

'Beige would be nice,' she thought to herself. 'I'll ask Mom if we can paint my room beige.'

Max, in the room next to his thirteen-year-old sister, looked out the window at the fog-covered backyard. He noticed a tall, twisted tree with a thick trunk in the middle of the backyard. He was somehow able to make out the shape of the tree very clearly through the thick fog. It had about a dozen branches spiraling off of the top, but they might have well been normal sized trees. His jaw dropped in amazement. The tree had to have been at least a hundred years old! This was a big thing to a nine-year-old kid. He couldn't wait to get to the yard on Saturday and climb it.

Downstairs, Susan sighed and climbed the creaky stairs to her kids' rooms.

"Alex?" she asked while opening the door to Alex's room. "It's ten thirty at night. I think you need some sleep. We all do."

Alex just groaned and said, "Okay, Mom. Night."

"Good night," replied Susan, closing the door gently.

She knocked on Max's door, calling Max's name softly. There was no answer. She opened the door to find him asleep, sprawled across his bed as if he had fallen over onto the bed after falling asleep looking out the window.

She carefully positioned him the right way on his bed and tucked him in.

Susan began to walk down the hall to her room when she heard very light footsteps behind her; they were barely audible. But Susan heard. She whirled around quickly and saw something so surprising she jumped.


	2. What Happens in the Dark

She shook in terror at the great surprise the empty hallway gave her.

"I could have sworn there was someone following me..." she mumbled to herself. "I guess it's just one of those things."

Not being able to sleep in her room, Alex just laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling. Her room was pitch black, but she could see the general shape of some things in black and white. The girl was a thinker, and she thought up a plan. A crazy plan in her head to find out how to move back to Cleveland, Ohio. She would think up a list of why Cleveland was better than this rotten stinkhole and she would show it to her mom one day. She knew it would work. Her mom loved lists. In Susan's world, lists solved all the world's problems.

She gave up on trying to sleep and reached to turn on her light and read. At the very edge of Alex's consciousness, she heard a voice quietly say, "Don't be afraid of the dark, Alexandra."

Jumping out of her skin, Alex pulled the covers around her a little tighter and laid in the dark. Her book was not, she decided, so important she would get scared out of her mind again for it.

But what was it? It couldn't have been Max; he was the next room over. And, nobody called her 'Alexandra.' That is, with the exception of her doctor and schoolteacher. So it was very formal if someone called her 'Alexandra,' but who would?

'It was just me,' she thought.

Susan, walking into her room, reached to turn on the light so she could get ready for bed.

She heard as her hand went toward the light switch, "Don't be afraid of the dark, Susan."

"Who was that?" she called into the darkness.

No reply.

"You answer me right now. Who. Said. That. To. Me?" she said in a low, serious voice.

Yet again, no reply.

She decided that the first step would be to turn on the light. Maybe whoever was hiding would be lit up and she could see who it was.

But, like before, when her hand went to the light switch, she heard, "Susan, I said, don't be afraid of the dark."

She flinched her hand away and jumped.

'Calm down, now. It was nothing,' she reassured herself. But she was still wary.

She got over it and quickly turned on the light before the scary voice could say anything.

Susan cautiously walked over to her bed and laid down after changing into her pajamas.

What if there was a crazy in the house? The second this thought went through the mother's head, she practically flew out of her bed to check on Max and Alex.

Susan slowly opened the door to Max's room first because her son was only down the hall from her. She peeked through the little crack of the door and saw only the usual things in his room: posters, a dresser, and a bed with a little lump in it where he was sleeping. She breathed a sigh of relief and went around the corner to her daughter's room.

She opened the door a crack to find Alex already asleep and perfectly okay. She breathed yet another sigh of relief and went back to her own bedroom. But, what she didn't know was that her shadow from the moonlight stayed where it was.

**Author's Note:Okay, I know. It was a little longer than the first chapter. But they usually are. Anyhow, I really need some reviews on this one. I hope you like where the story is going. If you don't, can you please, please, please let me know. I'll love you forever:) so Merry Christmas everybody! Byes!**


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